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Related papers: Shape-constrained density estimation with Wasserst…

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We propose a new statistical model, the spiked transport model, which formalizes the assumption that two probability distributions differ only on a low-dimensional subspace. We study the minimax rate of estimation for the Wasserstein…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2019-09-18 Jonathan Niles-Weed , Philippe Rigollet

We study the Wasserstein projection of a compactly supported probability measure onto the class of measures whose density ratio is bounded, and we place this projection in a broader program connecting generative modeling, optimal transport,…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2026-04-13 Hy P. G. Lam

We consider a data-driven robust hypothesis test where the optimal test will minimize the worst-case performance regarding distributions that are close to the empirical distributions with respect to the Wasserstein distance. This leads to a…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2021-06-01 Liyan Xie , Rui Gao , Yao Xie

Making sense of Wasserstein distances between discrete measures in high-dimensional settings remains a challenge. Recent work has advocated a two-step approach to improve robustness and facilitate the computation of optimal transport, using…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-09-04 François-Pierre Paty , Marco Cuturi

While the problem of estimating a probability density function (pdf) from its observations is classical, the estimation under additional shape constraints is both important and challenging. We introduce an efficient, geometric approach for…

Methodology · Statistics 2018-04-05 Sutanoy Dasgupta , Debdeep Pati , Ian H. Jermyn , Anuj Srivastava

We introduce a distributionally robust maximum likelihood estimation model with a Wasserstein ambiguity set to infer the inverse covariance matrix of a $p$-dimensional Gaussian random vector from $n$ independent samples. The proposed model…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-05-21 Viet Anh Nguyen , Daniel Kuhn , Peyman Mohajerin Esfahani

In this paper, we apply the framework of optimal transport to the formulation of optimal design problems. By considering the Wasserstein space as a set of design variables, we associate each probability measure with a shape configuration of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-08 Fumiya Okazaki , Takayuki Yamada

A common feature of methods for analyzing samples of probability density functions is that they respect the geometry inherent to the space of densities. Once a metric is specified for this space, the Fr\'echet mean is typically used to…

Methodology · Statistics 2018-12-20 Alexander Petersen , Hans-Georg Müller

We study optimization problems whereby the optimization variable is a probability measure. Since the probability space is not a vector space, many classical and powerful methods for optimization (e.g., gradients) are of little help. Thus,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-06-18 Nicolas Lanzetti , Antonio Terpin , Florian Dörfler

We develop a notion of projections between sets of probability measures using the geometric properties of the 2-Wasserstein space. It is designed for general multivariate probability measures, is computationally efficient to implement, and…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-08-04 Florian Gunsilius , Meng Hsuan Hsieh , Myung Jin Lee

Optimal transport and the Wasserstein distance $\mathcal{W}_p$ have recently seen a number of applications in the fields of statistics, machine learning, data science, and the physical sciences. These applications are however severely…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2024-05-24 Ruiyu Han , Cynthia Rush , Johannes Wiesel

This brief note aims to introduce the recent paradigm of distributional robustness in the field of shape and topology optimization. Acknowledging that the probability law of uncertain physical data is rarely known beyond a rough…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-01-13 Charles Dapogny , Franck Iutzeler , Andrea Meda , Boris Thibert

For statistical models on circles, we investigate performance of estimators defined as the projections of the empirical distribution with respect to the Wasserstein distance. We develop algorithms for computing the Wasserstein projection…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-10-22 Naoki Otani , Takeru Matsuda

The problem of modeling the relationship between univariate distributions and one or more explanatory variables has found increasing interest. Traditional functional data methods cannot be applied directly to distributional data because of…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-02-04 Yidong Zhou , Hans-Georg Müller

We address the problem of efficiently computing Wasserstein distances for multiple pairs of distributions drawn from a meta-distribution. To this end, we propose a fast estimation method based on regressing Wasserstein distance on sliced…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-04 Khai Nguyen , Hai Nguyen , Nhat Ho

Optimal transport provides an inherently geometric and highly structured framework for studying spaces of probability measures, supplying a rich theoretical toolkit for contemporary statistics, machine learning, and generative modelling. In…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2026-05-21 Riccardo Passeggeri , Rohan M. Shenoy , Pengcheng Ye

Optimal transport (OT) distances are increasingly used as loss functions for statistical inference, notably in the learning of generative models or supervised learning. Yet, the behavior of minimum Wasserstein estimators is poorly…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2021-07-20 Tianyi Lin , Zeyu Zheng , Elynn Y. Chen , Marco Cuturi , Michael I. Jordan

The sliced-Wasserstein flow is an evolution equation where a probability density evolves in time, advected by a velocity field computed as the average among directions in the unit sphere of the optimal transport displacements from its 1D…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-05-13 Giacomo Cozzi , Filippo Santambogio

Wasserstein distances are metrics on probability distributions inspired by the problem of optimal mass transportation. Roughly speaking, they measure the minimal effort required to reconfigure the probability mass of one distribution in…

Methodology · Statistics 2019-04-10 Victor M. Panaretos , Yoav Zemel

We study a class of optimization problems in the Wasserstein space (the space of probability measures) where the objective function is nonconvex along generalized geodesics. Specifically, the objective exhibits some difference-of-convex…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-01-08 Hoang Phuc Hau Luu , Hanlin Yu , Bernardo Williams , Petrus Mikkola , Marcelo Hartmann , Kai Puolamäki , Arto Klami